Evaluating the soft skills of unemployed youth (EVA Skills)

It is increasingly difficult for young people with low or no formal qualifications to find a job. However, even without formal training or labour market experience, young persons gather social and personal competencies. These "soft” competencies are essential for doing a good job. For some jobs, they may even be the most important elements of qualification. However, employers and those working with young people find it difficult to recognise and assess these informal competencies. Such assessment, though, is important to match employers with potential employees and to define training needs of an unemployed person so as to better satisfy the skill needs of a specific job.

While some European countries have developed widely accepted systems of competence assessment, others need to raise awareness on their significance and potential impact and to define the methods and procedures for competence assessment. The project, Evaluating the soft skills of unemployed youth, thus aims at a transfer of best practices of competence assessment for young persons. The project concerns the systematization of existing competence assessment methodologies in Germany and Sweden and their transfer and application to the other participating project countries. These methodologies and tools relate to the process of evaluating soft skills of young people, which were non-formally and informally acquired.

Background:

The project is a Strategic Partnership for Vocational Education and Training, funded by the EU programme ERASMUS+ and implemented at the initiative of the EU Commission and the National Agency of Cyprus.

Project duration:

Sept. 2014 - Aug. 2016

Further information can be found on the project homepage http://evaskills.eu/.